Project planning is essential for software projects. It involves estimating the work, resources, and time required. Key planning activities include defining problems and requirements, developing solution strategies, and planning development processes. Requirements planning is especially important - it helps eliminate defects by gaining user involvement, understanding critical needs, and considering non-functional requirements. Empirical studies show most firms plan feasibility and costs, though risk management practices vary. Thorough early planning is needed to estimate schedules, efforts, people and resources needed for a project's success.

1. Project Management
Planning
in
software Projects
JAYAKUMAR.PP
Post Graduate Diploma in eGovernance
IIITM-K,Technopark,Trivandrum
9847435193

2. SUBJECT MATTER
Introduction to Project
Management.
Planning in Project Management.
Planning in Software Projects.
Activities involved in Planning a
Software Project.
Journal 1 ( IEEE) - Successful
software projects need
requirements planning
Journal 2( IEEE) - Software
project initiation and planning - an

3. What is Project Management ?
Project management is the discipline of planning,
organizing, securing, managing, leading, and controlling
resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a
temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end
,undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives. It is a
systematic approach to planning and guiding project
processes from start to finish
Five Stages: Initiation, Planning, Executing,
Controlling, and Closing.

4. Planning in Project
Management
Project planning is a discipline for stating how to
complete a project within a certain timeframe, usually
with defined stages, and with designated resources. One
view of project planning divides the activity into:
Setting objectives (these should be measurable)
Identifying deliverables
Planning the schedule
Making supporting plans
Supporting plans may include those related to human

5. Planning in Software
Projects
Software project management begins with a set of
activities that are collectively called project planning. Before
the project can begin, the Project Manager and the
software team must estimate and look into.
 The work to be done
 The resources that will be required
And the time that will elapse from start to finish.
The future and accept some degree of uncertainty as
matter of course.

6. Lack of Planning leads to …
It is often said that early planning is impossible
because precise information concerning the project goals,
customer needs and system constraints is not available at
the beginning of a software project. But a major purpose of
the planning phase is to clarify goals and needs required
to plan a software project. Lack of good planning leads to
Schedule slippage
Cost overruns
Poor quality
High maintenance cost.

7. Software Project PlanningActivities
1.Define the Problem,
2.Develop Solution Strategy,
3.Planning the Development Process.
I. Define the Problem Involves :-
Understanding the problem
Justifying the need of a Software
Identifying the functions of a major subsystem
Identify the goals and requirements
Establishing high- level acceptance criteria for the
system.

8. II. Developing Solution Strategy involves:-
Outlining several solution strategies
Conducting feasibility study for each strategy
Recommending a solution strategy, indicating why
other strategies were rejected.
Developing a list of priorities for product
characteristics.

9. III. Planning the Development Process involves:-
Defining a life Cycle model and an organizational
structure of the project.
Planning the configuration management, quality
assurance and validation activities.
Determining phase development tools, techniques
and notation to be used.

10. III. Estimation in Planning Phase include:-
Preliminary cost estimation for system development
•Expert judgment
•Work breakdown structure
•Algorithmic cost model.
Preliminary staffing estimates
Computing resources required to operate and maintain the
system.
Identifying the sources of information and refer to them throughout
the project plan.
Software measures for quality and product
•Metrics used – Size oriented and function oriented
•

11. Journal 1 ( IEEE) - Successful software projects need
requirements planning
by Annie I Anton, Professor, College of Eng.
North Carolina State University
This paper mainly focus on importance of
understanding the requirements.
According to this author top three project challenged
factors are:
1. Lack of user involvement
2.Incomplete requirement and specification
3.Changing requirements and specifications
Standish Group surveyed that bad requirement
causes 40 – 60% software failures
Key Principles can help eliminate defects during requirement planning.
1.Understanding the problem before expressing the requirement.
2. Involve the stake holders early on and sustain their involvement to validate
requirements. We must give customers repeated opportunities to validate
requirement.
Prototypes – give users a tangible product – it helps to interact

12. Journal I ( IEEE) - Successful software projects need
requirements planning
by Annie I Anton, Professor, College of Eng.
North Carolina State UniversityKey Principles can help eliminate defects during requirement planning.
3. Ensure that Critical Requirements are considered.
Scenario Analysis – Obstacle analysis – What if questions
4.Give non-functional and quality requirements as much attention as functional
requirements.-users emphasis on functional requirements.
Non functional requirements express a software system’s properties,
including security, reliability, portability, and robustness.
Good requirement planning mean software can be cheaper to produce,
easier to build and less prone to unexpected failures.

13. Journal 2( IEEE) - Software project initiation and
planning - an empirical study
by D.Greer-UK & R.Conradi- NorwayThis paper describes the study on 14 established Norwegian software
companies - How they initiate and pre-plan software development projects.
The aim was to obtain an indication of the range of planning activities
carried out be these 14 software firm.
The Instrument of study was structured interviews. (Questions are left completely
open ended )- Sampling convenience sampling of 31 companies.
CMM level integration (Capability Maturity Model ) approach emphasis the role of
through planning in the software projects for improving the predictability and to ensure
the process improvement.
Question included from the topics :
 Software process Choice
 Feasibility Study
 Early Planning Documents
 Release Planning
 Risk Management

14. Journal 2( IEEE) - Software project initiation and
planning - an empirical study
by D.Greer-UK & R.Conradi- NorwayFindings of the Study
1. Most of the firms using Agile method (IID), few of them using Water fall model
2.Study confirms the perceived importance of Feasibility Study , but firms mainly
focus on Economical feasibility ,although several did mention on technical
feasibility.
3.Most companies produce at least a partial requirements documents. Early cost,
schedule and budgets are often documented, but other data on decision taken are
not documented.
4.Waterfall process associated with a single release do often include provision for
future releases. For agile scrum projects , the number of releases planned is
always two or more.
5.Risk Identification and Risk Monitoring are common activities but other risk
management were not explicitly performed in most of the companies.

15. Conclusion …..
The early planning of software project is very vital
and the software project planner must estimate three
things before a project begins:
How long it will take
How much effort will be required
How many people will be involved
In addition , the project planner must predict the
resources ( Hardware and Software ) that will be
required and the risk associated with this project.
The Success of software project relay on
user involvement and their participation
nces
study book on SE
A Practitioners Approach- Roger.S.Pressman
e.co.in

16. Questions
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